


sharp teeth in a broken jaw

by rowdyhomo



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Minor Character Death, More tags to come with chapters, Sensei Kushina, Shisui Has a Real Bad Time, Uchiha Shisui Lives, but he's definitely not happy about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:43:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13537002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowdyhomo/pseuds/rowdyhomo
Summary: in one life, shisui refuses kushina’s offer. this is not that life.(or: shisui never stops wishing he’d been smart enough to die.)





	sharp teeth in a broken jaw

“Shisui?”

It’s a study in deliberation on whether to answer. The red-haired woman below likely knows exactly where Shisui is and is only being polite enough to ask about invading his space. While his sensei understands the desire of isolation, she never quite got the handle on learning to leave someone alone. Especially if that someone, like Shisui, finds it impossible to untangle their tongue from the barbed wire that's her disappointment when they say ‘no.’

Shisui admits to himself he’s glad for it. There’s no one in the Uchiha compound who will do that. If he disappears no one asks after him unless it's to track him down for a task. No one just asks to ask. There used to be several people, but war had a funny way of taking everyone Shisui dared hold on to. Just days ago, his genin team proved no exception. Now the number of people that refuse to leave him drowning in his thoughts is but one.

He wonders when he’ll lose Kushina-sensei, too. He wishes he could say ‘if’ but if his life has proven anything it’s that he doesn’t have strength to hold onto anyone. It’s only a matter of time before she slips from him like shrapnel.

Oh, she’s tensing, Shisui took too long in answering.

“Mm,” Shisui hums, a monosyllabic Uchiha through and through.

Violet eyes lock onto him without hesitation. They meet his own dark gaze through the foliage, pinching up with empathy. Kushina offers a gentle smile like the unobtrusive open hand proffered to a ragged stray.

“Can I come up?” Kushina asks, as unimposing as a hurricane in human skin can manage. One hand already creeping up the trunk of the tree Shisui perches in.

Shisui considers, decides it really isn’t worth the trouble of rebuffing the woman, and obligingly shuffles further from the trunk. He never once uncurls himself, keeping knees bunched up. His arms wrap securely around his legs once more after he moves.

Kushina’s smile takes on a warmer tinge before sliding into teeth baring maniacal. She then begins to shimmy up the tree. The process of watching one of Konoha’s elite making her way up a tree without chakra—yes, Shisui checks—feels a bit like a fever dream. Branches come into reach several feet off the ground, expediting her progress by a mile as she maneuvers monkey-like to Shisui. She pulls herself onto Shisui’s branch, a crow of victory on her lips, and flops down next to him.

Shisui raises a judgmental eyebrow.

Kushina pouts. “Aw, c’mon! That was cool! Not many people can just do it based on their own strength, y’know. It’s all chakra this and chakra that, sometimes you gotta be like, well, chakra _this_!”

Kushina flexes, showing off her immensely impressive biceps in emphasis. Frankly, Shisui feels more impressed by her quads. Something to do with watching his sensei crush a man’s skull between them. An event traumatizing and awe inspiring in equal measure. Nonetheless, Shisui makes an appropriately appreciative noise. He wants guns like those someday.

That sends Kushina’s pout tumbling into a viciously earnest grin.

It’s suddenly too much, too bright and Shisui has to rip his gaze away. His fingers clench hard in the fabric of his shorts. Something raw and aching festers in the space between his chest and throat, his body tensing from head to toe.

It’s _stupid_ but the normality of Kushina’s behavior leaves him rubbed raw in a way the impassivity of his clan hadn’t. Half their team is _gone,_ the world and his village marching off without two parts of Shisui’s family like it's nothing. And nothing should be normal. Nothing should be _okay_. Yet, Kushina smiles like the world isn’t broken and Shisui can’t help but feel left behind.

“Oh, Shisui,” murmurs Kushina. Soft understanding and shared pain weigh her voice down. “C’mere.”

Kushina hand touches his shoulder briefly in warning then her arm slides around him and pulls him close. Shisui lets her tuck him into her chest like the child he’s never really been. The rough fabric of Kushina’s flak jacket grows damp beneath Shisui’s cheeks.

Shisui blinks rapidly…he’s crying? Something wrenches in him at the realization and a muffled whimper bubbles up from his throat. A keen follows it. Then Shisui sobs, everything heaving out of him in hiccuping cries.

Throughout it all, Kushina holds him firmly but not tightly. Caressing instead of gripping as she smooths a hand through Shisui’s curls, soft soothing noises vibrating from her chest to his. Her hair fills what little vision isn’t military green or tanned skin. A protective blood red curtain between Shisui and the world.

“Yer gonna be okay,” she assures, firmness giving her words enough of an edge to fill Shisui with confidence. “It doesn’t feel like it now, maybe it’ll take a long time, but ya’ll be okay.”

The red-haired woman repeats herself between comforting nonsense until the storm in Shisui settles into something less biting.

Shisui, once the waves of sorrow quiet, sniffles imperiously, “I already knew that, Kushina-sensei.”

It’s easier than saying he only knows since he’s already had to walk away from empty names before. Than saying no one ever really told him that—if his mothers had he’d been too young to remember. Than saying thank you.

Shisui wriggles more fully into Kushina’s lap, wrapping his arms around the woman like an octopus. He wipes away the mess of snot and tears on his own shoulder before burying his face into Kushina’s neck.

Kushina laughs, her body shaking Shisui’s, “Course ya do, yer my lil mini me, knowin’ awesome stuff like that comes with the territory, y’know.”

Shisui only hums. Bits of him are a bit more put together now, but far too much is missing. He's empty with exhaustion. Kushina asks no more and the two of them sit there in comforting silence. Shisui hiding and Kushina providing him refuge. Warm rays crawl up their forms as the sun crests the horizon. Idly, Kushina rubs small circles on the small of Shisui’s back. It soothes Shisui into light a light relaxation that's barely disturbed when Kushina shifts.

“Shisui?” Kushina questions the top of his head.

“Mm?”

“I…I would like to give you…something,” Kushina starts, fingers tangling through her own strands of hair laying across Shisui’s back. Her hesitance evident in the tap-tap against his spine causes his noise to scrunch. “However, it is entirely your decision whether to accept it or not.”

Her hesitating, jarringly formal speech draws Shisui up and back, so he can look her in the eye. Unfortunately, Kushina knows how to hide herself. For all that she rarely does, her expression gives away nothing but placid geniality.

“What is it?” he asks, curiosity burning untampered by caution through him.

Kushina never does anything in halves. Despite her hesitance, she meets Shisui’s gaze head on and explains evenly, “A seal. It is a bit like the Body Destruction Seal you have seen on me before but with a modification that allows a separate trigger for bloodlines tied into specific body organs. Both parts have the ability of triggering by will or death of the seal carrier, the bloodline portion can also activate through removal of the bloodline organ from the host body.”

In another time, Shisui's visceral recoil prevents his curiosity from going any further. A reaction written into him since birth, down to his core, to never allow anything near his eyes. Let alone sealing. Uchiha aren't Hyuuga.

In this one, it’s just a little too soon, a little too close to his recent loss. Instead of rejection jerking his mind away from any consideration, he’s filled to the brim with images of Hanako’s and Tama’s bodies. Hanako had carried no bloodlines, a civilian orphan who held nothing but her sizable skill to her name, and even that only by the skin of her teeth. Tama had been a Hyuuga, a branch member with her eyes sealed, blood line inaccessible after death.

It hadn’t stopped Iwa from peeling open skin and muscle to bare bone and viscera towards the unfeeling sky. Neither the sealing nor the lack of anything one could call kekkei genkai, preventing them from searching.

All Shisui sees is himself with him. All splayed limbs and broken flesh. He wonders if the enemy had killed them first—Kushina never told him. He wonders if the enemy would kill him first, before digging into him like earth covering treasure.

He hopes so. On both accounts.

Briefly, bitterly, he thinks Kushina should have offered this protection long before they had to let go of either girl in the name of Konoha. Then, he chides himself. He knows neither would have accepted.

Shisui can’t even say _he’ll_ accept it.

Anxiety, born between bearing equal pride and scorn from his Clan, raises it head, quietly asks if him he can handle being a disappointment even in death. There’d be no greater shame for Shisui, even larger than the circumstances of his birth—grandson of a Senju lapdog, than to lose his Mangekyou awakened Sharingan. His shoulders tense at the thought, gut clenching. His clan would hate him for having the seal but…he supposes they don’t have to know.

A secret keeps best when it’s unspoken.

Besides, he’s not a chuunin for nothing. Shisui sees what Kushina really offers between the lines: control. Choice. Deprived of such a thing for as long as Shisui remembers, Kushina may as well be asking to give him a mountain of gold.

Shisui swallows, forcing words past the ingrained hesitance clogging his throat, “How does it work?”

It’s not a no.

Kushina smiles slightly and gathers him up more securely. She drops to the forest floor in a teeth-jarring free fall, her body absorbing most of the force. Shisui’s head bobbles only a little, but he almost bites his tongue and gives Kushina his most petulant stare in retaliation. She snickers like the vixen she is, refuses to let Shisui down, and continues strolling along back towards Konoha.

Shisui lets out a groan worthy of his not-quite-double-digit age before relenting.

It’s…sort of nice, anyway, to be carried just for the fact that Kushina wants to carry him. No ulterior motives, not out of necessity because Shisui is fast but Kushina is faster and sometimes Shisui doesn’t notice danger before it’s upon him. Just because.

With Kushina’s chakra and warmth surrounding him, Shisui feels secure. Safe. Nothing, not emotions or an enemy’s blade, can reach him here in the arms of Konoha’s strongest kunoichi.

(Tsunade no longer resides in Konoha, so, no, she doesn’t count in Shisui’s humble opinion.)

Still, Shisui only just turned seven. So, if he grumbles about it for the first few steps, Kushina pays him no mind.

Along the way, Kushina meanders through the long and brain melting details of her modified body destruction seal. Shisui follows along as best he can, interjecting and demanding clarification as she goes.

Kushina bypasses the village wall with no fuss, then triggers a singular large body flicker to take her and Shisui to her and Minato’s shared home.

“—d’you got any responsibilities t’take care of today?” questions Kushina, interrupting her own explanation to juggle Shisui and undoing the traps to her home. She ignores Shisui pointing out it’d be much easier if she put him down and shoots a mental thank you to the gods that Shisui isn’t a kicker like Kakashi.

An aggrieved sigh pours out of Shisui, “No.”

Dark eyes flick over her speculatively. Kushina abruptly remembers that while Shisui’s far too polite to kick, he’ll certainly bite her if she pushes him too far. A brat after her own heart, really.

“Yer stickin’ with me then! Ya can have dinner with me n’ Kakashi. Minato’s out but we’ll manage M’sure,” she declares, leaving no room for protest as she kicks the door closed behind her. Seals laid into the walls and floors of the home humming to life along her senses.

Kushina deposits the boy onto her living couch with unnecessary flourish before he can think to snap, literally, at her. Shisui squawks petulantly and only just manages to land upright.

Mouth twisting, Shisui settles cross-legged and agrees with a solemn nod, “As long as it’s not ramen.”

“What! My homemade ramen ‘s awesome, y’know!” protests Kushina. She looks about ready to shake a fist at Shisui.

Shisui snickers not so discretely into his hand. “Uhuh, you only say that because you can’t cook anything else.”

“That’s a fuckin—flapjackin’ lie! Take it back!” shrieks Kushina, lunging over the back of the couch.

Leaping from the couch to the low table and across the living room, Shisui crows, “Swear jar, Kushina-sensei!”

“Da— _son of a bottom feeder_ ,” hisses Kushina, catching her slip just in time. The woman pauses to fish out and drop a couple yen into the swear jar on the kitchen counter, then resumes her hunt. “Alright! Yer mine now!”

Shisui flees exactly like one does when a hurricane made human chases you. Quickly and in shrieking terror.

 

At the end of the day, after a rambunctious and nutritionally balanced meal for three, Shisui agrees to have the seal.

**Author's Note:**

> Kushina can speak like a lady but she was absolutely raised a hellion and her speech patterns generally show it. Shisui's mothers, on the other hand, raised Shisui to be a terrifying Uchiha. The well spoken part is part of the terror inducing factor. Also, Kushina absolutely subscribes to the idea that all ninja children are dangerously hug/contact deprived. You can bet she gives Kakashi the same treatment but currently this isn't about Kakashi.
> 
> About the Uchiha not liking Shisui having his eyes sealed, it's a matter of pride. It says you're too good to get them stolen or to die where they'll be lifted from your corpse. shisui, however, is small, upset, just lost two more important people and so very desperately wants to have control in /something/ and that's just enough for him to say yes.
> 
> This /might/ be six chapters long. I don't know yet.
> 
> Comments on how I can do better or what you liked are appreciated!


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